A Return to Normalcy

Saturday, Brandon and I assembled our last piece of furniture.  We've had a lot of practice doing this over the years; our bed has now been assembled four different times, the crib three, the girls' bunk bed three, the piano two, and this time we added two new friends to the party when we finally got to put together a swing set and dome climber that we bought in 2011.  When I envisioned my exotic diplomatic lifestyle almost six years ago, I didn't realize that it would involve so many hex keys and muttered curses.  I'm so good at assembling that I don't even use the instructions any more.

Most of our boxes are unpacked.  Our house is very large and has multiple storage rooms, but none of those rooms have shelves to store things on and so all of my consumables, linens, suitcases, canning supplies, and random things that can't find a home are sitting in boxes in those storage rooms, under our front stairs, and in the guest bedroom.

The rooms have been measured for shelves, but I'm not sure of the timeline on them, so for now cooking is accomplished with a trip or two to the maze of boxes, sometimes with a knife, to forage for ingredients.

But other than those boxes, everything else in unpacked.  Friday the girls (unwillingly) and I (willingly) unpacked twelve boxes of books.  Every time one of them came across a friend they had especially missed, the work would stop until I noticed the offender hiding behind a chair or table and sent them back to their task.  When we finally finished, both grabbed stacks they had set aside and retreated to their room with their treasures.

With all of the unpacking - and assembling - finished, now I have to return to normal life.  My treadmill has arrived and so five tomorrow morning will see me wondering if exercising is really that important anyway - I've dropped ten pounds in the two months off - followed by a full schedule of school and dinner and all of the normal routines of every day life.

And unlike this past year, I don't have any major interruptions to look forward to or dread, depending on the interruption.  I don't have any impending babies or family reunions or pack-outs or trips or international moves.  I just have normal, every day life.

I've been living the crazy life so long now that I'm not sure if I will be able to handle settling down to the routine every single day, week after week month after month.  There's nothing like a good crisis to distract one from the monotony of every day life and shake things up a bit.  Secretly, even though I protest otherwise, I think that I'm an adrenaline junkie, getting my highs from high stress situations like international four-day plane journeys where I don't have to worry about my child's moral development, just what gate our next flight departs from.

When tomorrow morning starts, my year of living crazily will be over and it will be back to plain old normal life.  Wish me luck!